Oh, What A Tangled Web
by John Weckerle
It was about a month ago that we noticed that the Moriarty Chamber of Commerce web site was missing. Shortly thereafter (on or about March 2), the beginnings of a new site appeared, with most pages simply stating “New site coming soon.” The site has remained essentially unchanged since. It has come to our attention that the Edgewood Chamber of Commerce web site went dark this past Sunday, and remains so as of this morning. Given the history of outages in the past, perhaps a gentle admonition is appropriate.
The histories of both Chambers’ web sites have their similarities and their differences. Both chambers have had, to our knowledge, four webmasters/providers since publishing their first web sites (your editor was one of them for the Edgewood Chamber), and both are reportedly served by the same web design/maintenance provider at present. The Moriarty site is accessible on the web, but contains essentially no content, while the Edgewood site is missing entirely. The Moriarty Chamber has held the same domain name throughout its web existence, but the Edgewood Chamber’s most recent domain name – the registration for which expired on March 29, according to the “whois” listing – was its third since 2006. Both sites have had multiple “between providers” outages in the past, with the Edgewood Chamber having been publicly chastised for an extended lack of web presence in 2006.
Clearly, the issues facing the Chambers with regard to their current web situations are somewhat different. However, it is perhaps appropriate to suggest that the Chambers should be more vigilant in ensuring that they have a robust and continuous presence on the web. While some businesses benefit from Chamber events and other services, for many the greatest and/or sole benefit is their listing on and/or link from the Chamber web sites. Similarly, the community benefits from the visibility that Chamber web sites can provide. Failure to maintain a presence on the web damages the public image of the Chamber, may threaten to affect membership recruitment and retention, and may also negatively affect support from other organizations. In this day and age, having a web site is key to demonstrating the credibility of an organization, and the Chambers should give greater priority to ensuring that their web sites remain functional and relevant. The Chambers’ web sites should operate continuously, and all pages should have content that is kept up-to-date. We hope that the Chambers will resolve their web-related problems soon and provide their members and the community the associated benefit.
One Response “Oh, What A Tangled Web”
It might behoove the two chambers to look for a dependable local firm to develop and help manage their web sites..